Yesterday, in his appearance on ABC's Top Line, Dino Rossi tried to cast his opposition to health care reform as a way of protecting Boeing:

We need to repeal [the health care reform] bill. It costs—the 500 billion dollar tax increase alone cost the Boeing company in my state $150 million, but if you replicate that across the state of Washington, there’s tens of thousands of jobs that’ll be lost or won’t be created, because of Patty Murray’s 60th and deciding vote. We shouldn’t be trying to kill jobs in our state right now.

Today, the campaign of Senator Patty Murray is up with a new ad casting her as the great protector of Boeing—and the jobs the company creates in Washington:

Murray spokesperson Julie Edwards tells me there's no connection between the timing of the ad and Rossi's statements yesterday. "The decision to do this ad precedes those comments," Edwards said. "They had no bearing."

But the fact that both candidates are jockeying to be seen as Boeing's biggest advocate shows how much clout the company—even in relocated headquarters form—still has in this state, and how interested politicians are in wooing its executives and employees.

Edwards, for example, went on to try to knock down any notion that there could even be a competition between Murray and Rossi when it comes to Boeing. "I think that there is only one person who actually has a track record of standing up for Boeing," Edwards told me. "That person is Patty Murray.... There is no comparison here."

The Murray campaign says the new Boeing ad is airing in markets around the state, but it would not release details on the size of the buy.